What do you mean by Web Hosting, and things to know related to hosting before you build your website. Here’s a beginners guide. You have been surfing the net for several years now. You have created accounts on a few social networks and you consider yourself to be an expert at handling email and RSS feeds. But as far as website creation and management goes, are you a newbie?
Want to build your own website (or get it designed by someone) but not sure what web hosting is?
Owning a website is a must for all businesses today, and it also can be a good source of income if you know how to make money online.
You need a web server first, to put your web site on the internet. Owning and maintaining a web server on your own can cost money, and it also requires someone with the knowledge to maintain the server and the website.
An easier way is to outsource this task! A web host (company) can do this for you.
They provide equipment and other technical programs that are required to build a website. These hosting companies charge a monthly fee for the service of storing your web site and allowing your web site to be seen on the internet.
The physical web server does not reside at your office; the hosting company is responsible for maintaining your site structure, files and web pages.
Understanding Web Hosting
Well, it’s not that difficult concept to understand.
Here’s One Analogy
Perhaps the easiest way to think of web hosting is to imagine your website as a house that has been built in a factory, but that needs land on which to be placed. A web host would be the land for your website; hosting providers give websites a place to live.
Another Way to Look at It
Another way to interpret the definition of web hosting is to think of a web host as another computer that has a great deal of space. Customers pay to put their websites on that space (the space on the web host) which allows their sites to be displayed online.
Use of Servers
People who are just a bit more technical might understand that the web host is not merely another computer; web hosts provide the space for their customers on servers.
A server is a specialized type of computer that acts as a hub to connect computers. Servers store and manage information as well; this is why they are used by web hosts for their customers’ websites.
Another function of servers is that they provide data backup and storage. They also serve to provide email and internet access.
It’s quite likely that you may have been using servers before, for surfing the internet and checking emails; the servers for web hosting providers aren’t all that different; they just hold more information.
Why Do You Need Hosting?
So, why do you need web hosting for your website? The short answer is “so that people can see your website”.
Web hosting allows the world to have access to your site. There are other services that are provided by web hosting providers, however.
Through a web hosting provider, you will be able to:
- Register a domain name (address of your website, such as mywebsite.com)
- You will also get an email address at your domain name through which people (customers and clients, perhaps?) can contact you (something like contact@mywebsite.org)
- Back up your data online
- Manage the look of your site, and much more.
Types of Web Hosting
There are two basic types of web hosting that you can can choose from:
- Shared hosting
- Dedicated hosting
For most purposes, shared hosting plans will suffice.
These hosting plans are generally reasonably priced, starting at around $5 to $15 per month. With shared hosting, the servers of the host are shared among all of the hosts clients. This means that all of the host’s resources are also shared.
This is not typically an issue for most people who own small to mid-sized websites. However, if your website has specific configuration requirements and if you get a flood of traffic, a shared server may not be adequate for your site.
The other types of web hosting is called dedicated hosting.
With this type of host, your website will have a server dedicated specifically for your site, which means no other websites will be hosted on your server.
What You Should Know About High Capacity Web Hosting
If you own a website, you probably may not have experienced it yet, but popular websites do get tons of traffic. And if you still stick to the regular hosting plan, the visitors are not likely to enjoy the experience on your website.
If you have a popular website that gets a large number of daily visitors, and has several specific technical configurations, probably its time to switch over to high capacity web hosting, instead of just a regular shared web hosting plan.
But before you make that switch, you need to find out about the various available options.
Your Current Bandwidth
The best way to know if you need a high capacity hosting plan is to check the bandwidth of your current plan and see how well your website functions at that bandwidth.
Not sure what bandwidth is?
An easy way to understand bandwidth is to think of it as a pipe. Information from your website flows through that pipe to customers. Your pipe needs to be wide enough to allow the right number of customers to easily come and go from your website.
If you have more customers than your pipe can handle, the pipe will get choked up and customers will not be able to load up your site very well or very quickly.
And that is when you know its time to get more bandwidth…and a higher capacity web host.
What is High Capacity Web Hosting?
Several web host providers provide different types of web hosting packages (labeled as high capacity). So, each web host has a different concept of what high capacity hosting actually is.
Here are the two popular options.
1. For many providers, all it takes to turn a regular hosting plan into a high capacity plan is to:
- Increase the storage space to anywhere from 500 MB to 2 GB
- Increase the bandwidth up to 10 GB to 50 GB per month
- Add more FTP accounts and SQL databases
- Increase the number of email lists, subdomains, parked domains, and more.
Other websites have a different concept of what high capacity hosting should be.
2. These sites believe that regular shared hosting may not be suitable for larger and busier websites. But, instead of insisting upon a dedicated server situation (which can be very costly and difficult to manage), these web hosts offer a a special high capacity hosting in which certain servers are used by fewer accounts (say less than twenty accounts).
The host also increases the disk space and bandwidth for each account. This type of package does cost more than regular shared hosting packages; however, it allows webmasters to have the easy management of a shared server with the extra resources of a high capacity package.
Selecting the Appropriate One
Once you have decided what type of web hosting is suitable for your needs, you also need to keep an eye on the various packages and offers from the web hosting providers.
Here are some of the temptations/specials that are thrown in from time-to-time:
- Free domain registration (for the first year)
- Massive discount for the first year
You’ll also see other offers, which are usually gimmicks (and not really true) to attract your attention, such as:
- Unlimited amounts of disk space or bandwidth or domain names or email addresses
- Unlimited amounts of all of these.
These are too good to be true, especially for shared hosting.
It’s usually a good idea to stay away from the cheapest (and free) web hosts, as well as the most expensive hosts. The ones in between (average price) usually offer good web hosting and service.
The best option, of course, is using a a dedicated server, which is the ultimate high capacity web host plan. But then they are quite expensive and require a good deal of technical knowledge.These are suitable for the largest and the busiest websites!
CPanel Web Hosting: What & Why
cPanel is a user interface that provides access to various aspects of your web site, so that you can easily manage them. Using the various features offered by cPanel, you can perform several tasks and do maintenance activities, which you’re unlikely to do otherwise.
How Does It Help?
With cPanel, it’s easy to set up a blog on your website, and do other activities. It simplifies working with several aspects of a website. Even if you have no knowledge of website coding, HTML, or programming, you can learn to manage the creation/maintenance of your website on your own.
Through cPanel, you can also handle your own administrative tasks. You can also build a mailing list for your clients and customers. The interface of cPanel is easy to access/navigate — everything you need is in one place.
Useful to the Hosting Company As Well
Its not only useful to you, but also the hosting company. Most web hosts offer cPanel because it not only makes website management easier for the webmaster, but it also results in a lower need for direct technical support from the web host. So basically, even the web host ends up saving time and money. That’s why, finding cPanel web hosting is not difficult at all.
Do you Need to Install It?
As a user you don’t have to worry about it. The hosting company will make sure that cPanel is installed on the server for you to access. Any web host that wishes to use cPanel can purchase the necessary software. This means that even website hosting resellers can offer cPanel to their customers if they choose.
Most Web Hosts Provide This Feature
When you start looking for a hosting provider, you will see that there are quite a lot of cPanel web hosting companies. This is great, because you will be able to select the best web host from among these. You will be able to compare the other features and services offered by each of these companies in order to choose the best host for your website.
One important factor is security (from hackers), its essential to select a web host provider that is diligent in its efforts to ensure security for its clients. Aside from security, you should consider features such as disk space, bandwidth, the cost per month, customer reviews, and special items such as the number of domains included and the number of email addresses included.
Unless you are a computer expert or a website programmer, you should choose something that makes your life simpler, especially when it comes to web hosting. cPanel allows you to easily manage your website, lets you perform website tasks and maintenance that you may be unable to do otherwise. By comparing several web host providers that offer cPanel, you’ll be able to determine which one is the best for your website.
Web Hosting Service: Choosing the Right Type
Depending on what you wish to accomplish, a website can be of a few pages or hundreds of pages. It can also have different functions built-in.
And to cater to these requirements, even web hosting services are available in different packages, based on cost and the infrastructure offered.
So once you have decided which hosting provider to choose, you can consider what sort of hosting service you need for your sites.
Should You Consider Free Hosting?
If you are just putting up a site with few pages, learning how to build one, or probably trying to learn about internet marketing, this can be a good option.
So though it is free, there’s a catch. The free web hosting service providers make money by putting up ads at the top or bottom of your web site. And the ads could be totally irrelevant to the theme of your site.
Besides, free hosting means the web site will load very slowly as lots of people will be using it. You usually also get a free web email account with free hosting services.
For most serious work however, paid option is the best!
What Is Shared Hosting?
A shared hosting service manages multiple websites through the same server software. The resources of the server are divided to host every one of the websites. Each website may be provided with a separate hard drive volume, to host its web pages.
This is what most webmasters choose for their websites (the smaller websites with few hundred pages)! The various ads and coupons that you see from hosting companies are usually for this type of hosting.
Shared or Dedicated Hosting?
How complex/big is your site? When going for the paid option, you need to decide the complexity of your website. Depending on the business size, complexity, you may have to choose between shared or dedicated hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
In dedicated hosting service, the client leases an entire server (not shared with anyone else) allowing it full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. (suitable for huge websites.)
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Because the dedicated hosting option can be expensive, there’s one more option that you may consider — VPS (virtual private server) that offers some isolation to your website (although not like the dedicated option, but definitely better than the shared ones.) You get a separate operating system, along with dedicated RAM. So, even though your website shares the same machine with other websites, your own operating system is isolated and you get higher bandwidth and more control (suitable for websites with moderate level traffic and plenty of software features).
If you’re not sure, especially when it comes to graphics and database administration, you should talk to a developer or consult with an internet specialist to decide on the type of hosting that you need.
Web Hosting Provider: Customer Support
Web Hosting Provider: Customer Support plays an important role for most prospective clients. It is a deal breaker in most cases.
Using a Web Host
When you outsource your internet server requirements to a web host, you achieve the following:
- Streamline your internet costs getting the maximum from your hosting provider
- Work with knowledgeable technicians
- Pass the IT control functions to the host so you won’t have to worry about maintaining servers and other equipment
You can read more on the advantages and the services offered by most web hosting companies here.
Please note that Web hosting usually doesn’t include developing your website (unless they have a special/separate development program). You need to develop the programs (website or server side code) on your own or have someone else do it for you.
Up-time is Important
When we talk about any online property, be it a blog or a static site, its important that it is online all the time. It needs to be available for almost 100% of the time.
It would be really embarrassing if you put up a site, and ask all your friends to check it out, only to realize that it is down most of the time.
This is why it is important to choose a good Web Host!
Customer Support Needs to be Good
One of the important parameters on which to evaluate a Web Hosting provider, is to check how good their customer support is.
You need to be sure that they will provide you with the right level of customer support.
So what are the things that you should look for? Here are some:
- Does it have a toll-free customer support number?
- Is there a forum where customers come online to discuss problem and solutions?
- Provides a schedule of any downtime
Toll-free Line
A toll-free number means the company is confident of dealing with your problems. If they’re paying for the call, they’ll try to get to the solution as quickly as possible.
It is a good idea to contact them on email as well, to keep a log of the problem.
Knowledge Base & User Forums
This is another good sign that they’re good.
An exhaustive knowledge base, video tutorials and a user forum means your problems will get resolved soon, or you’ll be pointed in the right direction.
However, lot of posts on the user forum is not a good sign either, because it means the turnaround is not quick.
Updated Documentation?
The best ones are those that also provide you with a schedule of planned down-time.
Hosts who maintain updated documentation of potential downtime and other issues on their site, are professionals who really care for their clients.
If you’re thinking of building a website, don’t just rush to the cheapest host. You want your site to be available almost all the time, so do some comparisons before you choose one. If the Customer Support of the Web Hosting Provider ranks high, you can assume they’re good.
Best Rated Web Hosting Provider: Finding the Genuine Ones
Every website owner wants the services of the best rated Web Hosting provider. Here’s how to distinguish the genuine ones from the average (fake) ones.
When it comes to hosting providers, we all want a web host that:
- Is reliable, trustworthy, and inexpensive.
- Provides adequate space to your website.
- Provides sufficient bandwidth to your website
But the problem is that almost all the web hosting providers seem to offer these. So, how to ascertain which is the best choice for your website?
Checkout Comparison Sites
The easiest way is to compare several hosting providers. There are several websites out there that compare and contrast web hosts in many different categories.
Checkout a few hosting comparison websites to see which names are getting consistently good reviews & ratings.
These comparison websites also give you an idea of the pricing, disk space and bandwidth offered, by each provider.
Avoid the Free Ones
While there are several free web host providers, it’s better to avoid them. Couple of reasons being:
- No guaranteed up-time (your website may not be available most of the time)
- Lots of banners and ads on your website (they have to recover the cost from somewhere)
Also, the comparison sites that receive advertising/commissions from certain web hosts may be biased toward them. That’s why it’s important to check at other places as well.
Keep Your Needs in Mind
Most legitimate host rating websites will also break down the ratings into categories, such as:
- Types of hosts (shared, dedicated, and reseller)
- They may also include features, such as cPanel hosts, Fantastico hosts, E-Commerce hosts, Green hosts, and more.
By going through the information provided on the host-rating websites, you’ll definitely get a clearer picture of the various offerings, which will help you choose the one that fits your websites needs.
How Much Does it Cost?
Every web hosting company has special packages for each and every need.
From personal to business servers, even servers for special kinds of operating systems (UNIX, Windows, Linux and Apple), the choices vary depending on what you want to do.
The prices also depend on how much space you need on the server to load your applications & files.
- HostGator
- BlueHost
- GoDaddy
- HostMonster
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